What feeding stray dogs taught me about word of mouth marketing

Sometimes we are reminded of the big secrets in the business world by what appears to be the most unrelated situation. My house is fairly new, some of the residential complex is still being built and it’s quite empty most of the time. As it happens to any construction site, stray dogs come and never leave. No one is working right now, because of the weather, so no one can feed these dogs. They are starving and one of them keeps visiting me.

So what could I do? Feed her (I discovered it’s a girl), of course. But real and quite a lots of dog food was required; luckily I had help 🙂 . She kept coming and then other dogs showed up. I now have three that come by at least once a day. And my friends pointed out how word spread when the dogs started enjoying a good meal.

And then it hit me. When building a WOM strategy, we think of engaging customers, of enabling them to better spread the word, reach the online communities and help them discover our products or services. This is wrong because we should always start with a question: Is our client satisfied? If it’s yes, spreading the word will be easy.

Customer satisfaction should always be the number one priority. Making what they have to say known always comes second. Simply because you really don’t want your customers to say „Oh, well, they’re ok, most of the times!” You want them to say awesome, great, or legendary when they speak of you. Don’t you?